Autism before we had a word for it
Around 300 BCE, Aristotle's successor sketched thirty everyday Athenian characters. Read them today and you'll recognise a lot of neurodivergence. The 'autism explosion' is an explosion of recognition.
Science & evidence
How we know what we know, and what happens when it turns out to be wrong.
Can psychologists make a diagnosis? Yes, but that's not the real question
Australian psychologists are trained and qualified to diagnose. Whether that diagnosis is accepted is about who controls the money, and about a DSM being used for purposes it was never designed for.
Every day my AI assistant forgets who I am
Three hours into a writing session, ChatGPT forgot what we were doing, and it felt like a small loss. Why we get attached to AI tools, and why that makes them risky.
Voles: what they teach us about monogamy and scientific method
First off, if you aren't someone interested in evolutionary biology you may not have heard of Voles (rhymes with goals). But they are these cute little relatives of hamsters that have given scientists an incredible…
Therapy Myths
I was recently asked to respond to the question of whether or not it has been “proven” that “General Psychologists” get the same outcomes as “Clinical Psychologists” and that there is in fact no value to Master’s training. I have been of the opinion for some time that a number of people have …
Psychotherapy: Waiting for a paradigm shift
What is a paradigm shift? The idea of a paradigm shift has been hijacked by advertising agencies and used to describe everything from a new smartphone, to a lower fat cheese. But in science, the idea of a paradigm shift has a slightly more nuanced meaning. Physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn coined the …